I’ve been enjoying a needed break from blogging this year but I thought it was time to pop my head up and share some thoughts. So I put together a round-up of current SEO and digital marketing trends that offer good opportunities for publishers.

Some are newer, others are longstanding, but I wanted to gather them together and focus on the benefits for news and content sites.

A key point of emphasis is that the first two items are reflective of a growing trend away from the website as we know it. Traditional websites will continue to be the primary digital home for news organizations, but the lines are shifting and more change is coming.

Google News has been in the news itself lately, from European efforts to impose taxes to questions about its value and even suggestions for giving it a full redesign. But just how much traffic is it currently driving to publishers?
In working with … [Continue reading]

Google Panda was designed to go after sites with a high volume of thin or low-quality content (among other things) in an effort to improve the overall strength of the search results. But the unfortunate reality is that with just about every Panda … [Continue reading]

Mobile is an important and growing traffic source for all publishers, but just how much traffic does it represent?
I was curious where things currently stand so I pulled mobile traffic figures from SimilarWeb for a variety of well-known brands. … [Continue reading]

Editorial teams and content creators are always on the lookout for useful tools for keyword research and content planning.
To help with that, I've put together a list of the best options for keyword research, competitive analysis and monitoring … [Continue reading]

London-based Houston PR is blasting out (yes, that's an intended pun) a gimmicky press release to announce its relocation and rebranding.
It has put out what it believes to be the world's highest press release:
While I'm not a particular … [Continue reading]

Google News continues to be an important source of traffic for publishers, in particular from the news OneBoxes that are frequently included in regular Web search results.
While most news search optimization efforts rightly focus on editorial … [Continue reading]

What are the best tools for publishers looking to track social media activity at the content level?
There are a lot of options for social monitoring, tracking and analytics, with prices ranging from free to very expensive. I thought I’d share … [Continue reading]

On average, what percentage of referral traffic to publishers comes from search, social media, links and direct navigation? That’s a question I'm commonly asked by organizations that are attempting to establish benchmarks and assess their current … [Continue reading]

I wasn't able to write as many posts as I'd have liked this year, but I did put out some things that I was happy with and people seemed to find useful.
And fortunately I do this just for fun so in the end it doesn't really matter.
So as I … [Continue reading]